Understanding How Knowledge Works with Us

So I’m not saying that understanding is wrong. It’s simply the thing that we rely upon for realization, which works very well in the particular world, the world of form and structure and mechanisms. It’s very inadequate in terms of understanding the greater questions of life such as who we are and why we’re here, who sent us, whom will we meet and what are we here to do.

So understanding is completely appropriate in its own domain. But when we speak of greater things, then understanding has to be eclipsed and directed by a greater comprehension that Steps to Knowledge and the New Message are here to engender and support within all of us.

So the thing that I would like to speak about tonight is how Knowledge learns from us. We think Knowledge is omnipotent, but Knowledge actually exists beyond time and space. So how does Knowledge, as our appointed guide in life, learn about how to guide us living in the physical reality, since Knowledge extends within and beyond the physical reality, and is fed and guided by the Greater Coordination in the universe, which represents God’s ultimate work in the universe?

When we’re born, the Separation within us already begins to take place and we become shaped as a person, a person in a family, a person in a family in a culture living at a particular time of history with certain kinds of forces and realities that exist at that time. So Knowledge has to learn who you are as a person, over time.

We end up in the world and we realize we’re in this world and we have to get our bearings here and figure out how to survive here and how to deal with the force of our family and our parents, the realities of life to a certain extent, increasingly.

So Knowledge is learning about us through this entire developmental process. “Who is this person I’m going to be guiding and directing? How are they shaped? What forces in their environment have altered them, distorted them or continued to impress upon them? What were the key relationships in their development, and what impact has that had upon their being a person in the world?”

Knowledge has to learn all these things about us to know enough to guide us in life. Knowledge is a mandate for us, but the mandate is an ultimate destination rather than a specific time and place because everything is changing in the world as people change their decisions, as people go on and off course, as circumstances alter people’s lives. So it’s like a moving goalpost of where our sacred rendezvous might have to happen. It’s here, now it’s over here because of all the forces at play in terms of what people decide to do, why they decide to do what they do and where that takes them.

So Knowledge has to not only learn about you as a person and your development as a person, it has to learn about the environment in which you live and the things that are the major influences in your life, be they positive or negative, helpful or destructive. So in a way Knowledge has to grow up with you in your personhood.

Now being a person is a very temporary thing. But while you’re a person, you are a person, and you have to be a person. Knowledge, then, has to follow this process and learn how to guide and direct you specifically while maintaining its overall trajectory for your life. It’s partially in the world now with you. It’s not living beyond time and space where the whole notion of being a person is irrelevant, or being in physical life is incomprehensible.

The New Message states that from the position of Heaven, or those living in an eternal state, being in form is incomprehensible. And when you’re in form, Heaven is incomprehensible, the realities being so completely different. There’s no evidence of the world in your permanent state. There seems to be no evidence of Heaven in your worldly state. That’s how different they are.

So Knowledge is like the bridge between the permanent reality and the temporary reality we all live in because they represent the two aspects of our nature.

So we begin as a person. We grow as a person. We’re shaped as a person by our own decisions and by all the forces around us that impact us. We’re conditioned by our cultures. We mimic one another, tremendously—more than we realize. And Knowledge has to know, as we grow, how it is going to direct us. What will be our nature as a person? What would be our tendencies, our strengths, our weaknesses? What we respond to, what we don’t respond to, which seems to be unique amongst us to a certain extent.

So we have to learn to connect with Knowledge. But my point here in presenting all this is that Knowledge has had to learn about how to connect with you since the very beginning of your life here and to be in the world enough that it can take this journey with you. I mean, it’s not a million miles away from us. It’s in the backseat wanting us to become the driver. It needs for us to be the driver. We don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know why we’re going. We don’t know what we’re here to do, but Knowledge does. But you have to drive the vehicle, called your mind and your body, which is why there’s no bypassing the mind and escaping into Knowledge, or giving your life over to God like God has to manage your haphazard life? “Give it right back to you. Your life, please.”

So we have this amazing relationship internally that requires an initial learning and adaptation for Knowledge to enter into this world with us. And also later on, once we develop and become a person, we have to learn about how we’re going to relate with Knowledge. And should we fulfill our mission on Earth, our personhood has been completed and Knowledge’s mission is completed. Then there’s another mission.

So that’s why Knowledge is watching us all the time. Its task is to keep us moving in the direction, navigating a world of constantly moving shapes, not just people, but everything. And where our rendezvous points or our turning points occur depend upon so many variables.

I gave the example in our Free School a week or two ago about Knowledge being the master and commander of the ship. And your body’s like the ship. Your mind is like the captain, or the sailing master, the sailing master being a person who can run the ship, whereas the master and commander is the person who has the mission and has to run the ship, depending upon the sailing master because running a ship is a 24/7 operation and the master and commander can’t do that.

So where I’m getting with this is that our development as a person and our ability to take the Steps to Knowledge as a person are meant to bring us back into alignment with Knowledge within us and the intention of Knowledge, and the direction that Knowledge has been given for us for our life.

At the very surface, it’s teaching our minds to think in conjunction with what Knowledge does. Knowledge doesn’t think the way we think. It’s here to move in a direction, but it has to navigate that direction, too. So there is certainly some thinking involved here. But its effectiveness in guiding us is so much dependent upon our development and, in the case of Steps to Knowledge, our redevelopment because our personal development becomes sort of decrepit, needs to be redeveloped so we can take this journey.

That’s why your mission in life, the purpose for which you’ve come, is the most important thing, eventually. At the outset, engaging with Knowledge is the most important thing because only it knows where you need to go and how you’re going to get there, overseeing your life.

And as a student of Knowledge we have to be willing to be in the driver’s seat: make decisions, be responsible for them; take risks; learn what’s real, what isn’t real by watching others, if possible, but directly when necessary. We have to be the drivers. We own the mind and the body of this person.

So this is a relationship—you as a person in relationship with who you really are, which is completely not understandable because the only thing that’s understandable are things of this world. There’s nothing eternal that we can understand because it defies our capacity and our ability to understand. It doesn’t even fit. It’s not even an appropriate approach to things like our ultimate state or Ancient Home and things like this.

But we have unfinished business in this world. We have things we need to do, people we need to meet. Knowledge holds that card for us and is directing us in such a way that we may have an opportunity to begin to realize that and to take that direction and support that direction.

And we present particular obstacles to Knowledge, given the degree that our lives are unexamined. We don’t really know what’s restraining us. We don’t know why we are ambivalent. We don’t know why we do certain things unconsciously. We don’t know why we’re not fully reliable yet, even though we have good intentions. And we have formidable attachments in this world, mostly to ideas about things, but sometimes to things—our attachment to being a person, the person we think we are.

So Knowledge has to work with our strengths and our weaknesses, increasing the former and teaching us how to manage the latter so that we can take this mission together.

At some point, we will go through a series of stages when we realize that Knowledge is who we are—still incomprehensible but definitely experienced. But that may be quite a ways down the road. Knowledge is not going to guide us in all things because it doesn’t need to, not if we’re going to be the driver. The driver may not know who is going in the vehicle, but the driver has to know how to manage traffic in the world and how to keep the vehicle running. You can follow my analogy here.

So we can’t give over the driver’s seat to Knowledge. It doesn’t work like that. It’d be so easy just have Knowledge guide me. “Holy Spirit, guide me. Jesus, guide me. I’ll just be this dummy that just goes along and does whatever I’m supposed to do and everything will be fine because I’m not making the decisions anymore.” But that’s coming from a position of dependence, and that’s an immature position in life, meant for children or people who are helpless.

So the training is learning how to follow Knowledge, but it’s also learning to become the driver. And there can be a lot of ambivalence about that. You don’t have the confidence. You don’t know what it means. You don’t know how to do it. Somebody else should do it for us.

So I’m giving you this perspective because I want you to think about these things that I speak of. I’m not just giving you answers that you can tell other people about. I want to plant seeds within your mind that are really important for your self-realization going forward.

You know, a real insight is like a seed. Its true purpose and meaning are not apparent at the beginning, just like a seed doesn’t look like a plant, or what it will eventually become should it’s about forth, which is why I’m always disturbed when people share real insights with other people. It’s like digging up the seed and showing it to people. You don’t even know what it is yet, or what it could be, what it might mean.

So I’m planting some seeds within you. You will probably not be able to understand them in the way that you’re used to. But if you can allow them to grow and not talk about them very much with other people, then they have a chance to take hold within you and can flourish as you go forward. When these things come back to you, the things that I’ve said or things that you have read in the Revelation or in Steps to Knowledge will come back to you in such a way that they show you things. They’re already growing within you.

Every Step is like a seed that’s growing within you, not just for this moment, but for where you’re going and what you’re going to need.

So let us learn to be with the mysterious, and let us learn to navigate the concrete world, both. The real driver follows the Mystery, but drives the vehicle, the vehicle being your mind and your body and your affairs in the world. The driver makes small decisions. The Presence guides and makes big decisions.

May the Presence be with us.